Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Dick Lochte's Top 20 Private Eye Novels

Ed here: In addition to being both a fine novelist and short story writer as well as a very perceptive critic, Dick's is list especially interesting to me because he includes novels I've never seen on any other list before. And now I want to read or reread them. Keep scrolling down after the Top 20 Novels because Dick gets into movies and tv. Cool stuff. (This was originally published in the PWA newsletter)

22 comments:

We at PWA are poutting together a list of "Essentials." Lists are being sent to me. When I have them all I'm compile a final list of Essential novels, movies and t.v. shows, and then we'll do a press release. This is is keeping with TCM's Eddentials. Also, WWA often runs lists of their top westerns

Interesting pics. As all lists do, this one has set me to thinking of glaring omissions (IMO), like Latimer's SOLOMON'S VINEYARD, Delores Hitchens' SLEEP WITH SLANDER, Roney Scott's (Gault) SHAKEDOWN. I'd take those three over half those listed. And I'd suggest GALTON CASE or ZEBRA STRIPED HEARSE as MacDonald's best.

No two people will come up with the same list. That's obvious. There's just too many strong candidates from which to choose. Thankfully!

Good lists. I agree with most choices, but would argue the TV show MURPHY'S LAW was a big mistake. Everything that made the books so wonderful were absent from the show, which is probably why it didn't last long.

Great lists. I love them just for the shout-out to Goodnight My Love with Richard Boone and Michael Dunn. I thought I was the only one who had it on a list. I gotta find that on DVD - it never pops up on TV.

Not a bad list of books. Nice to see Arthur Lyons and Jonathan Valin on the list. I would have probably included something by Michael Lewin and Stephen Greenleaf as well. Nice to see no Spillane as I find him unbearably bad.As far as movies go glad to see the Big Lebowski but Tony Rome was terrible.

Dick Lochte is a terrific writer and a great guy, but his novel list does not serve the PWA's stated intention of creating an "essentials" list. Bob Randisi has stated, more or less, that he wants to create a reading list that would help a beginning reader in the genre understand that genre.

Certain writers belong on such a list without question. Hammett. Chandler. And of course Mickey Spillane, despite what one of these comments says. Spillane shaped and reinvigorated the postwar private eye novel -- without I, THE JURY or ONE LONELY NIGHT, you don't really get it. Certain writers I don't particulary care for -- Robert B. Parker for instance -- need to be on the list for similar reasons -- Parker reinvigorated and put a new stamp on the genre (Crais and Mosley, fine writers, could not have written their books without Parker going first). So whether I "like" Parker or not is beside the point: he's an essential. The same argument applies to Spillane.

And you need both Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky on such a list to understand and appreciate the wave of female private eyes (and female private eye writers).

I love Warren Murphy as a guy and a writer, and the TRACE books are fun -- but he's on and John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee isn't? And again, Trace but not Mike Hammer? A bunch of these choices are fun and quirky...but do not meet the PWA criteria.

Dick has created a favorites list, and that's fair -- everybody has their favorites. I wish my Nate Heller was on his. But it's his list and his favorites.

Nice to see Charles Alverson on the list. I haven't read his Goodey books, but his one-off crime novel FIGHTING BACK (1973) is a very good Mafia novel about a restaurant keeper who avenges the mob. (It's got nothing to do with the movie of the same title, even though the stories seem pretty much the same.)

Alverson knew Terry Gilliam in the sixties and is credited with having some of the screenplay for Gilliam's first feature film, JABBERWOCKY.

Of all the comments about authors missing from my book list -- and there have been quite a few here and elsewhere -- the one that is the most valid is Mickey Spillane. Originally, the list was much longer. Fifty titles, maybe. In whittling it down, I'm not sure why I dropped I, THE JURY. It's certainly not because I don't consider it "essential." Love him or hate him -- and I can't even use the latter as an excuse -- Mike Hammer is a key player in private eye history. It was a mistake not to include him.

I know my dad love private eye books, movies, etc. I'll have to send him this list to see if he's read any of those. I've seen a few of those movies before, they're all pretty good! I think it's funny Big Lebowski made it onto this list, it's weird to see it grouped with a classic like Chinatown. :)